SoftFLASH: analyzing the performance of clustered distributed virtual shared memory

The authors have built an aggressive kernel implementation of a virtual shared-memory system using SGI multiprocessors and 100 Mbyte/sec HIPPI interconnects. The system obtains speedups on 32 processors that range from 6.9 on the communication-intensive FFT program to 21.6 on Ocean. In general, clustering is effective in reducing intermode miss rates, but as the cluster size increases, increases in the remote latency, mostly due to increased TLB synchronization cost, offset the advantages.